


The Beautiful Life We Built

by Lexasyellowpellow



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Fix-It, Fluff, LITERALLY THE SOFTEST THING EVER, Mild Angst at times, Not Canon Compliant, They're so in love it hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:00:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28730844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexasyellowpellow/pseuds/Lexasyellowpellow
Summary: This follows the story after Dani and Jamie leave for America but deviates from it and allows them the happy ending that they so rightfully deserve (and that we deserve honestly).
Relationships: Dani Clayton & Jamie, Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 1
Kudos: 66





	The Beautiful Life We Built

Three years had passed since Jamie drove a terrified, wholly uncertain Dani away from Bly Manor and toward their new adventure in America. It took awhile, but Dani was resilient and found her way back to herself; most days Dani was entirely herself and had Jamie not witnessed that strange godforsaken night at the lake with her own eyes, she may not suspect anything had changed. They’d fallen into a cozy, simple life together, nice and boring and completely perfect. They spent their days working harmoniously and tirelessly in their flower shop, a business they’d built from the ground up and which they were immensely proud of. Jamie reveled in how the shop had gone from a seedling of an idea in her head to a fully bloomed and thriving business within such a short time. She had the shop and she had Dani, and she couldn’t imagine ever needing or wanting for anything else.

In the early days of their American adventure, Dani had been antsy, not wanting to settle into a routine or stay in any one place for long. She was still fully dialed into the flight mode of her fight or flight response from the experience at the lake. Dani balked at the concept of making plans or settling down somewhere. It was an exhausting whirlwind of rental cars, train rides, truck stop diners and motels for several months as they raced against the time Dani was sure she did not have.

Jamie treasured the memories of their haphazard road trip around the States, because those were also the early days of their relationship, ones where Dani learned she could depend on Jamie and let her guard down. Those early days Dani had been so scared, and she’d just seemed so young and vulnerable. She had the look of a wild animal that would run if you made any sudden movements toward it. But for Jamie, she would uncoil; she’d allow herself to rest and to revel in the rare feeling of safety one gets from being with their most special person. They moved around a lot those months, but never felt lost because they had each other.

It was Jamie who had suggested Vermont, although she dared not hope for anything more than a holiday trip, one or two weeks tops. They’d taken a train through the countryside, reveling in the gorgeous views out the windows and when Jamie laid eyes on the snow covered landscape of northern Vermont for the first time she’d gasped, eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning. She was instantly taken by the charm of the quaint town. The architecture had character, the parks were expansive, the little shops were darling, and there was even a cafe that made decent tea (for a shop in America). She noticed right away also the demeanor in the locals toward them was friendly, less wary, generally welcoming even. They didn’t pull nearly as many odd looks from strangers trying to suss out the nature of their relationship. It felt like they fit. Jamie at first had felt a bit saddened by this fact, thinking it couldn’t be permanent and that Dani would likely have them off on another train in a week or so.

They’d walked through the town one evening after having dinner at a charming little Italian restaurant and Jamie’s eyes had landed on the empty storefront with the little sign on the window stating it was available. Her eyes had practically popped out of her skull, surveying the location and huge windows providing an ample supply of natural light. She’d cleared her throat and glanced away not wanting to make Dani uncomfortable, but it was too late- Dani had seen. She didn’t verbally acknowledge but she smiled knowingly and gave Jamie’s hand a little squeeze and that had been that. They’d applied for a business loan the next day and upon receiving approval, they found a little flat within walking distance and moved right in that day. It was a labor of love and a huge leap of faith but they took the jump together; and Jamie could not imagine loving her life more as a result.

Now three years into their nice simple Vermont life, Dani finally seemed at ease in her skin. She wasn’t constantly jumping at her own reflection any longer and she started to plan for things like holidays and vacations. She had the occasional bad day, usually following after a nasty nightmare, but mostly Dani was able to live by Jamie’s motto of taking everything one day at a time. On bad days and sleepless nights, Jamie was there to hold her close and whisper reassuring words into her ear. On the much more frequent good days, Jamie was there to delight in their time together and to shower Dani with more love than either of them had ever dreamed of experiencing in their lives.

It was on one of these particularly good days that Dani started to wonder if perhaps her Beast, lurking for so long now that her possession felt almost _normal_ , would ever actually wake. She loved her life and it really felt like it was _hers_ and belonged to no one but herself and Jamie. Dani still felt nervous for the future, but started to feel the nerves dissipate a bit around the edges. On days where she really felt fully present in her body and her life with the woman she loved it was hard to remember why she’d ever been so afraid in the first place.

They did not talk about Bly. It was one of their unspoken rules. The only time they even thought about Bly was when they heard from Owen or Henry and that was not particularly often with how expensive long distance calls were. Jamie thought of Bly more often than Dani, who for her part willfully put those days out of her mind. For Jamie the manor had been the first place where she truly felt she belonged, her first real home, and had held the only people she ever really thought of as her family. She missed Owen and she missed poor, sweet Hannah and she even missed the little gremlins although she supposed they weren’t so little anymore.

On the days when Jamie was overcome with the missing of her makeshift family, when the memories flooded her brain and threatened to cause tears to spill from her beautiful hazel eyes, she would try her best to hide it from Dani. She knew she didn’t have to, of course Dani would never want her to, but she knew that Dani also did not need to be burdened by thoughts of Bly. If the thoughts came while they were at the shop, Jamie would pour herself harder into her work, digging her hands into the thick soil in the back room and repotting plants and seedlings. If the thoughts came instead while she was at home, she would disappear for hours into the bathroom, letting her memories wash away in the tub and watching her tears mix with the water as they swirled down the drain. Dani always gave her the space she needed and when Jamie would return to her after the bath, exhaustion and vulnerability inked into her aching limbs and sunken eyes, Dani would hold her close and mumble sweet nothings into her hair.

The two women fit seamlessly into one another, each giving and taking in tandem. When Dani woke one night seemingly frozen, sleep paralysis as it were, convinced she could see the Lady standing over their bed, her eyes widened in horror and mouth agape with a silent scream, Jamie was there. Jamie turned the light on, effectively banishing the specter from Dani’s vision and then calmly, soothingly, spoke to her bringing her back into her body. Dani blinked hard and choked on a sob, which had Jamie quickly moving to pull her tight against her body into an embrace that said _you’re safe_. Dani didn’t have the sleep paralysis often, thank fuck, but when she did it was always followed by the worst of her bad days with her thoroughly spooked and drifting through the day constantly looking over her shoulder expecting to see her Beast staring back at her. Dani could not have been more grateful for Jamie, for the strength of Jamie’s love. It never failed to bring her back to herself, that light that seemed to emanate from Jamie whenever they locked eyes. She knew she’d have been fully lost long ago to that grasping, vengeful darkness inside if not for that light and that love.

Being with Jamie felt as easy as breathing and soon Dani realized they had been together for a full decade. Ten years with the love of her life. Ten years, nine and a half of which she’d spent possessed and yet she was still here, she was still _her_. It didn’t hit her on their anniversary, but rather on a completely random day as she was returning home from the library, excited about a new book she’d found for Jamie that she knew she’d love. She had spent ten years waiting, ten years saying one day at a time, let’s see where it takes us. Dani realized she’d spent so much of her life saying maybe another time, wait, one more day, even long before meeting Jamie- especially before meeting Jamie. She didn’t want to wait any longer, didn’t think she could if she tried.

The clerk at the jeweler was thankfully, _like them_. He was kind and he’d smiled knowingly and without judgement when Dani had picked two identical rings from the case. She was trembling as she paid and trembling worse when she battled with a half-dead plant she’d found on a neighbor’s front porch. The neighbor had been confused by why Dani wanted it, but was more than happy to let it go considering they were convinced the poor thing could not be revived and was a lost cause. Dani slipped the ring in among the twisted rotting roots and tried her best not to drop the plant as she struggled to open the door to their flat. She tried her best to seem casual when she presented the plant to Jamie, simply shrugged and smiled and tried to make it seem perfectly reasonable that she’d wanted to rescue this disheveled plant from the street. Luckily for Dani, Jamie was thoroughly distracted trying not to burn the pasta sauce for the hundredth time in a row and hadn’t noticed how nervous she was acting.

When Jamie went straight for the roots just as Dani had known she would, she felt her stomach roll even though she knew, logically, what Jamie’s answer would be. She turned around and saw Jamie’s beautiful, confused, questioning face and all of her nerves melted away in an instant. Jamie was holding the ring so delicately, her eyes filled with wonder and a flicker of hope as she stared at her girlfriend. She’d never expected or wanted for anything more than what they had. She knew she’d promised Dani one day at a time, that she’d said one day at a time was fine by her. She knew Dani had a rocky history with weddings and marriage and would never have even thought to broach the topic with her for fear of dredging up painful memories. But, she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought about it, that she hadn’t in her heart yearned for more, for something secure and permanent and wholly theirs. She’d never expected in a million years that Dani had been wanting it too. Jamie felt tears slide down her face and heard herself respond. She felt dizzy and fully overwhelmed by the immensity of the love she felt for her _wife_ and she swept Dani into an embrace and a kiss that she hoped said everything that her brain currently couldn’t form into words.

Truthfully, being married, at least in all the ways that mattered, didn’t change much about their lives. But it certainly _felt_ like it changed things. Jamie walked with an extra spring in her step, proud as punch to call Dani her wife. She literally could not stop saying it. Would say it to just about anyone if not for Dani’s shyness. She marveled at the rings on their fingers, gazed for hours into Dani’s eyes, at her sleeping form against her in bed, at her beautiful smile as she spoke to customers at the shop. Jamie simply could not get enough of her wife. Dani similarly was quite taken with her new role as Jamie’s wife. She delighted in simple acts that she used to not put much thought into, making dinner, buying a new wine to try, folding Jamie’s flannels for work. She used to dread this type of domesticity but with her marriage to Jamie it felt right, it felt like love. Each little domestic act she did was another way to show Jamie how much she cared and how much she appreciated her. The ring against her skin didn’t feel oppressive the way her engagement ring from Eddie had in the past. That ring felt like handcuffs, like a one way ticket to a life in a birdcage, a life she had never wanted and could never want in a million years. This ring, however, made her feel warm inside every time she looked at it. It made her feel whole and safe, like she finally really belonged somewhere. She hadn’t known she could feel like that until she’d met Jamie and she thanked the stars every day that she still got to feel like that so many years later.

When Dani woke up on their first anniversary of being married she felt the change in herself before she saw it. She’d woken before Jamie somehow, a particularly uncommon occurrence as Jamie tended to wake with the sun. She padded into the bathroom careful not to wake her wife and then upon seeing herself in the bathroom mirror, promptly decided waking her wife was exactly what needed to be done. Dani blinked repeatedly into the mirror, sure that she was seeing things, determined not to make any rash judgements until what she thought she was seeing was confirmed by Jamie’s more reliable eyes. Jamie stumbled into the bathroom, limbs barely awake, but voice filled with concern as she responded to Dani’s calls for her. When she confirmed Dani’s vision in the mirror, her own eyes reflecting the shock, cautious joy, and an overwhelming feeling of relief, Dani started to cry. Her eyes, both blue for the first time in over a decade, wept tears laced with so many different emotions Dani couldn’t begin to name them. Jamie joined her in crying and held her tight to her chest sinking to the bathroom floor and staying there for what felt like hours reveling in the feeling of holding her wife with the knowledge for the first time since before that fateful night at that damn lake that no one was going to take Dani away from her.

They couldn’t be sure what drove the Beast away, but Dani speculated that it was their love and Jamie was too much of a sap to contest her theory. The ghost had been so consumed by rage and hatred, a sucking black hole of despair and yet it was no match against the ever flourishing light of Dani and Jamie’s love for one another. Dani presumed the ghost must have grown unable to inhabit her as they were simply incompatible. Dani too filled with love and light to host something so dark and vengeful. They celebrated with a trip to Paris to spend time at Owen’s restaurant and delight in sharing their joy with one of their oldest friends. He sobbed openly when he saw Dani with her two bright, brilliant blue eyes and the two women pulled him into a happy embrace. They stayed in Paris for a week, spending their nights at Owen’s restaurant and their days wandering around revisiting their favorite spots from previous trips.

When they returned home, Dani started to do something she’d always tried to avoid, she began to plan for their future. She finally didn’t have to step cautiously looking over her shoulder waiting for the other shoe to drop. She reckoned she had a lot of time to make up for and she wanted to give Jamie everything she’d always been too afraid of in the past. They lay in bed one night about a week after returning from Paris and Dani asked boldly, without any inkling of hesitation if Jamie had ever thought about having kids. When Jamie recovered from choking on her surprise, they held each other as they discussed the intricacies, the difficulties as they were both now well into their 30s with Dani being just a year and half younger than Jamie. They realized that if they wanted a child they’d need to act quickly and Jamie decided as she was with anything with her wife, that she was all in if Dani was.

They traveled all the way to a fertility clinic in California to see a doctor who was famous for working with people who wanted to form less traditional families. The doctor was honest with them from the start, wary of Dani’s age and wanting to make sure they understood that there were no guarantees the procedure would take. But when Dani now back home in the comfort of their well loved little flat woke up one morning to the realization that her period was late, Jamie practically running to the corner store and back in record time with the test and then pacing anxiously in the hallway as they waited for the little stick to tell them if their lives were about to change immensely, they realized pretty quickly that their worries were not needed. As Dani watched the two little lines appear on the screen she immediately began to cry, passing the test to Jamie and falling into her wife’s comforting embrace.

They named their daughter Poppy, a wistful combination of Jamie’s pet name for Dani and a flower. She was a cheeky little thing, precocious and full of whimsy. She had a love for stories and an equal penchant for tumbling about in the dirt. Because of the donor they’d used, which they’d opted for one that resembled Jamie as much as possible, their little girl sported a head full of wild brunette curls. She had blue eyes like Dani’s and had adorably picked up on Jamie’s accent when learning to speak.

Poppy was a perfect combination of her mothers in every way. She loved growing up at the flower shop where the customers would fawn over her as her mothers worked. She learned to walk one day simply because she wished to be closer to the pretty pink flower a few paces away and so she’d pulled herself up and carefully toddled over. As she grew older she learned to love helping her mothers in the shop, singing to the flowers and watering them with her little elephant shaped watering can. She liked to make up stories about the flowers where they could talk and where they would have adventures after the shop closed for the night. She delighted in telling her mothers the stories as they beamed at her proudly.

When Poppy turned six, Dani and Jamie decided she was old enough to travel on a plane and they brought her to meet Owen for the first time since she’d been born when he’d come to them. Although he’d seen photos of her since, he was overwhelmed by how much she’d grown and how striking her resemblance to both women was. He bit back a sob when Poppy lovingly referred to him as Uncle Owen and Jamie had gone on to explain that she considered him her brother, a heavy sentiment considering her past with her biological brothers. He felt his heart swell as he pulled Jamie into a hug and laughed as she pushed him off with a playful retort about how that was quite enough of that. Poppy fell in love with Paris and they promised they’d bring her back often to see her Uncle.

Poppy was ten when Henry called to invite them all to Flora’s wedding. She’d never been to a wedding before and was very excited. She asked her mothers what their wedding had been like and when she saw their faces fall she instantly felt anxious like she’d done something wrong. It was Dani who spoke first lovingly pulling Poppy into her arms and stroking her hair to reassure her that everything was okay. She met Jamie’s eyes over Poppy’s head and began to explain as best she could in terms a ten year old could understand why they hadn’t been able to have a wedding yet but would love to someday, if the laws changed. Poppy was a little bitter after the conversation, her little mind unable to grasp why people would make laws that would prevent two people who loved one another as much as her mothers did from getting married. She said if things hadn’t changed by the time she was older, that she would change the law herself drawing the biggest smiles from both of her moms and fixing the mood entirely.

When Vermont finally legalized same-sex marriage in 2009, Poppy skipped straight to the flower shop from school unable to contain her excitement. She burst into the shop and had the delight of telling her moms the news as they had been working and hadn’t yet heard. They’d all cried happy tears then and Dani had ceremoniously dropped to one knee and asked Jamie if she’d marry her legally. Jamie just laughed and scooped her wife into her arms with an eye roll and a kiss so passionate it caused Poppy to squeal and put her hands over her eyes. They planned their wedding which was actually pretty easy considering they could do their own flowers and Owen flew in to handle the cake. Poppy proudly walked Dani down the aisle and stood beside her mothers as they exchanged their vows.

Dani couldn’t believe how lucky she had gotten. At the beginning she’d felt lucky for every day she was still blessed with being in control of her body, for each morning she could wake up with Jamie by her side. She still felt lucky for that, but now she had so much more, more than she’d ever dared dream. As she gazed at her beautiful family, her wife and her daughter sitting together on their couch laughing at something on the television, Dani marveled at just how lucky she was. A powerful sense of peace washed over her, tugging at her heart and causing her to exhale softly and smile all the way to her eyes. She settled down on the couch joining her little family and nuzzled into her wife’s side. Poppy was getting older and with that would come more change, but Dani didn’t mind. She no longer feared change or not having enough time. Instead she reveled in the existence of time and the changes it brought, the gray streaks in her wife’s hair, the soft wrinkles on her own face, her daughter already surpassing Jamie in height. Each change was proof that Dani was still alive, was still here, was still her and that was the most beautiful and glorious gift Dani could have ever hoped for. 


End file.
